Think tank proposes new model of teacher accountability

The Center for American Progress has released a new proposal for how states should hold K-12 teachers accountable for the academic performance of their students.

The proposal’s Web site states, in part:

Our current system for holding U.S. teacher education programs accountable doesn’t guarantee program quality or serve the needs of schools and students. State oversight for teacher preparation programs mostly ignores the impact of graduates on the K-12 students they teach, and it gives little attention to where graduates teach or how long they remain in the profession. There is no evidence that current state policies hold programs to high standards in order to produce teachers who can help students achieve. Moreover, every state does its own thing when it comes to program oversight—another barrier to effective quality control…

The redesigned accountability system proposed in this paper is an effort to direct regulatory oversight to things that matter: whether or not K-12 students are learning, how well teachers have developed the classroom teaching skills to be effective with their students, a graduate’s commitment to teaching as a professional career, feedback from graduates and employers, and high-quality tests of teacher knowledge and skills that are tied to classroom teaching performance and K-12 student learning.